Re: Busy Wood / Stable Wood

On Fri, 31 Mar 2006 16:45:48 GMT, walkinay@xxxxxxxxxxx (hank alrich)
wrote:

rockon02 wrote:

Art, I'm surprised that you would accept "scientific evidence", we all
know how reliable that tends to be.

Todays findings are in tomorrows rubbish bin.

Of course, that's how learning works. But "we" did figure out
eventually that the earth circles the sun, and not the other way 'round,
and so it goes today, still. <g>

Often the progress is revelatory rather than contradictory, as our
methods of perceiving and analying become more refined.


Exactly. It's not really that "today's findings are in tomorrow's
rubbish bin" - instead, it's more like "today's findings are refined
and expanded upon to help develop tomorrow's findings". Rarely does
science do a 180 and say that what we thought scientifically yesterday
is out the window and now we believe something completely different.

First we thought the world was flat. It was obvious. Then we
discovered that the world was round. It's not that the flat-earth
thing went in the rubbish bin, for some applications, considering the
world "flat" still works. We just refined our understanding of the
concept of "flat", applying it to a spherical planet that's so large
it *looks* flat and gravity always makes "down" perpendicular to the
horizon.

But then we found out that the world isn't actually spherical, either.
It's sort of squashed. And gravity doesn't always point "down" to the
center of the earth, but sometimes is very slightly changed by dense
minerals, etc.

These are all refinements, and they don't consign previous
understandings to "the rubbish bin".

I think what Mike was thinking of was how one week coffee is bad for
you, and the next week it's good for you, etc. But that's not science
- that's popular infotainment reporting about science, and it's not
really science that's waffling about, it's the popular press's
reporting about it that's all over the map.

.

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